Roadrunner

Roadrunner / oil on canvas / 5x7 / unframed / $68, including shipping

AS I WRITE THIS, I am halfway through Texas. I've watched the landscape go from the flat, open plains of the Eastern Shore to the winter-scrubbed mountains of Tennessee, to rain-swollen, mud-filled rivers and bayous in Mississippi and Louisiana, to the still-green hills of eastern Texas. Today, I will find myself in dry, brown mountains and then flat, open plains, making some sort of a full circle before I see the mountains of New Mexico and the red soil of Arizona.

Two days ago, I found myself looking at a ramshackle, junk-strewn, chicken-filled yard of a trailer in a think forest near a stream in Mississippi, and wondering what life was like there, what it felt like to live in that trailer, eat eggs from those chickens, watch your dog drag mud into your house every day from that creek - and I realized that this is why I needed this trip so desperately. 

I needed to wonder, to think, to look outside myself. I needed this trip to wrench my focus off my own life, my own loss, my own circumstances. I needed to force myself to look beyond my own needs, and see something different, something new, something other than my world. 

***

For Today

Born Again

You can't trust oblivion.

In the Serious Mountains,

a hidden lake, utterly still

is swept suddenly by rain. 

Crow hops out of no crow

and eats the diamond -

countless births, countless deaths.

Sky brims over with sky,

Wind harrows the grasses,

River narrows and quickens,

stronger than the strongest swimmer.

It's only March, and already

the pear blossoms are falling.

Just remember this -

you weren't the one 

who wanted a separate being.

You are the frail wing, rescuing love

from love's faceless mirror. 

- Michael Hannon

From "A Bird Black as the Sun"